Internet, House Stuff and What Exactly Is A Best Friend?

Liftoff.....I have internet peeps. In the new house. Beware!

Also while internet man was bringing that blessing, the UPS delievered my "incredibly cheap, luxury bedding" I got for my new bed from that little internet secret place where I get all my linens extremely cheap. Oh it was a glorious moment. I have the curtains hung (cause I didn't get matching curtains last time and could never find the right ones to match) and the bedspread smoothed out, it looks very bed and breakfast in there right now.

But the highlight of my day came while working on a paper for school while listening to Sex and The City on disc in my computer this morning. Anyone watched session 2 lately? Cause honestly, if you want to know the meaning of "What Exactly is a Best Friend?" you need to experience this moment.

This is a girls' blog and I keep it real, so I have to tell you....after this overheard conversation between my 4 fav girls, I totally shouted out loud...

"That is what a best friend is all about"!!!!!!!

Carrie: I need help, it's embarrassing but I got a new diaphragm and it's stuck. Now listen, I'm either gonna have to make an emergency visit to my gynecologist or one of you is gonna have to give me a hand.

Samantha: (pointing to the bathroom) GO! .... And I just had my nails done......(sigh)....you are so buying me dinner.

So peeps, I know it's a little personal but can you count the number of friends who'd slug back a martini and then go after a stuck diaphragm for you? Those are your true friends.....call one of them up and tell'em you love'em and you'd help a girl out too.

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Boonies

So one draw back to living in the boonies, no internet.

Working on getting internet, but noone down here seems to be in a hurry.....for anything.

So I'm hiding out in the old rv park's shower room plugged into their internet and electric to charge my laptop and post my school stuff....and facebook surf. Turns out sitting at Barnes & Nobles for 3 hours doing school will bleed your laptop dead.

Dang......

Be back as soon as I get air, I mean wifi..

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Hello Little Town

Oh what is a girl to do when it's raining and Murphy is hiding in her lap, Duchess is still snoozing and Princess isn't due home from church camp till this afternoon.......

Why she should catch up on True Blood and Hawthorne episodes online.....of course.

That aside I've been up to my eyeballs in crazy around here these days.

We got our rental house.

Then I made arrangements to fly up and get my household goodies out of storage in Oootah.

Then I realized that I blessed a good family friend with my 10 year old bedroom suite that I absolutely loved but Dave said was on it's last legs. Oh it was a beaut. Honey wood, gracious me alive that bed was beautiful, wrought iron and 4 posters. It was a birthday present from Dave a bout a million years ago and had been through about a million military moves.

So Duchess and I made hay while the sun shined and after a million and one furniture stores, I finally did the smart thing. I asked my hairdresser, Lance, where to find a good bed and not bleed money. So there we went and there it was.

A big ole beautiful king sized all wood, Ashley sleigh bed on clearance being the last one in the store. It was insane that it was still on the floor, but once I left the store it was sold baby sold.

So we got it all delivered yesterday and set up in the new house. The bed is gorgeous and even more so because it was so dang cheap....but seriously I am in love with the new bed. I surprised Dave by taking him over after work to see the new bed, put together, in the new room, in the new house. And he promptly took off his shoes and tried to take a nap. Now he's pushing to have us move in asap. He's ready for that bed.

I'm ready for the showers, baths, 3 toliets, and yeah the bed.

However, it's the kitchen that has been featured in several dreams. You see, it's massive...seriously massive. Countertops for days. A dishwasher and all the usual kitchen stuff.

So after our house "visit" last night, we tried out our new neighborhood's super walmart. And I realized that I'd left my old must have square plates that I just had to have with my renter at the old house cause frankly they were a pain in the butt to wash and basically live with. So at the new house I would be living with more paper plates, plastic cups and utensils. I did what any sensible woman would do, I purchased a walmart set of plates. And man oh man, it become the biggest conversation and debate Dave and I have had in weeks. We swiftly agreed on the fabulous white, thick, 50's style diner dish set for 19.99 and then we talked about how much we've progressed from "buying it cause we can" to now, being uber frugal and cautious with our spending, just because we want to.

Overall, I have to say I absolutely was worried about how this new move would turn out for us. Except, it's shown me that we can still be somewhat normal, putting ourselves back into society without conforming to everyone else's standards.

This weekend, starting a move in on the new place........then on the 5th I'll be going up to Utah to drag my stuff back and people.....it's gonna get crazy after that, trying to set up house.

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Whew, Finally Get A Breath

I've been running nintey to nothing for weeks now. Finally this afternoon, I've been able to sit back and take a deep breath. Dear Lord but has my summer been insane. As Duchess says, "I'm so glad your home all the time to take care of me..." Good night, how do mom's stay at home and get all this done. I've juggled parenting, work, and marriage for years now. This is the first summer I've had off with my kids and I have never been busy!

Princess is now knee deep in youth at our new church. She is going to weekly summer youth camp and today right after church left for a 5 day spirit filled youth camp past Houston. Today for the first time in our Sunday morning service, I saw my kid (sitting with the youth group) raise her hands to the Lord during a praise and worship song. I teared up and was weeping like an old lady watching my baby interacting with the Lord. What an amazing moment for a mommy!

So youth camp each day includes devotional, music lessons (this week was trumpets), community and/or church service and then they spend time helping the youngsters with their devotionals. The confidence and maturity is already blooming in my pre-teen. I love seeing her so happy. I don't think I realized how much of a social butterfly Princess is.

Duchess spends her day helping me with errands and has special playtime when Mommy is at the gym.

Both kids were the driving force in our finding a house here locally. Since we're not traveling with Dave's new job, the kids and I were having a hard time justifying the rv. And people, we needed more than one bathroom.

We are so blessed. We got an amazing place down here. It's simple, out in the country on the edge of a fantastic little town. We were so worried about how we would manage this new move. We were anticipating being on the road for a year and a half. Six months into this, the Lord had other plans. And here we are.

The first person to call on a house listed with no pics, the first to see this little gem and even though he is working 70 hour weeks my sweet, dear Dave made the time to go see it the same night. We called and told them it was ours. We're leasing it, considering we have our house in Utah under lease to a renter. We signed the lease and paid our monies yesterday. It's fantastic and it's ours.

Best of all, it's in a great school district so now we don't have to put our kids into private school. When we began broaching the idea of settling down, Dave was insistent on the kids going into a private Christian school. I would work to pay the tuition and we'd settle down. The areas we looked over never felt right. Until this house in the country and this small flourishing school district. Now, I can work parttime eventually to stay busy and the kids can get back involved in a school, making friends. My sweet babies are chomping at the bit. We didn't realize just how much they missed it. You know it, it being normal life....

But while we're settling in, we're doing it our way. I have found that carving our own path is much better for us in the long run.

So I have to get plans made to return to Utah for our household goods, get my kids to their final summer camp in July and get our happy butts settled into a real live house....a house with 3 bathrooms........love me some bathrooms....

And now I have a ton of school to catch up on...

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A Different Way of Life

We are listening. And we are stepping out on faith......

Tonight, I'm going to sign a lease on a Texas house.

It's in a very very small country town, 10 minutes from the big city and 30 miles from Dave's work.

It's got a fabo school district.

It's got a HUGE yard.

It speaks to the part of my soul that has been longing for simpler times and getting back to basics.

HUGE change.

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Round the Corner

So here we are again, leaning over the edge wondering where to go from here.

So once his contract ended and he got his new safety manager job, it has become very apparent that this is a long term permanent local thing.

We've joined our local church, got the kids involved in youth/kids activities and joined the local gym.

Now we're pondering whether to strike out and find us a rental house since we have our house in Utah rented. RV living is cool when you travel but not so cool when you're staying put in one area for a long time.

Cautiously dipping our toes in the water, we're scouting the local area. But mainly, we're waiting on the Lord. We walk on faith around here peeps.

And tomorrow I'll fill ya in on all family stuff we gots going on down here in the God's Country as they call Texas.

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And She's Back

The happy paper writer is back and she's kicking and screaming at the top of her lungs. Flowing nicely into my senior year of school, I'm back in a class of ONLY ESSAYS. Once I got all four English classes, three History classes, and two pysch classes out of the way, I really thought my days of paper writing was behind me.

Enter "Judgment in Managerial Decision Making" where the book is a very petite 120 pages, I'm required to use previous classes, working knowledge, and appropriate sources, I'm to apply the concepts of this class to my life in general.

Kill me now. It's bad enough that Dave somehow managed to overlook his English 101 class and is now probably the only senior taking this class and I volunteered to proof his papers. Now I'm up to my eyeballs in freaking papers. Yep, I'm that girl again. Carrying around my paper requirements and a tiny notebook to write down immediately any idea that comes to mind....this is always interesting at the grocery store when I stop and shhh the kids so I can "write this down really quick so I won't forget".

Pray for me now.

Please.

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Dear Self

You're sweaty and exhausted. You can't raise your arms above your head and since the shower at the gym was out, you didn't get a shower but guess what....

You held your own at the gym. Robert may have pushed you through the paces and added a lot of hard stuff today but you hung in there and walked out with your head held high.

We rock.

And we're taking a nap now, so you'll feel up to swimming later.

Love,
Brain

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Warning: Me in a Canoe

There are so many options for blog post titles on this one, I've considered the following:

I tipped it alot but stayed dry.

He did all the work.

They all had chicken and beer, we had salad.

I peed on my shoe.

He took a picture.

This is not how I pictured this.

And finally: holy crap this is harder than it looked.

So we got up early on our first full day without my sweet babies, who are as I type living it up in Colorado with my folks. Dave the Gentile rolled me out of bed and we headed to the gym bright and early.

For once, we had a good time at the gym. I almost fell off the exercise ball but managed to catch myself and I didn't toot at all so I consider the gym a success. We also managed to work out with each other and left the gym talking and happy, a first for us as usually when we work out together I'm pissed and he's frustrated. Thank you Robert the trainer.

He treated me after the gym to a breakfast taco in the very worst area near the refinery but oh my goodness what a yummy yummy treat. Hmmmmmmmm good. For sure!

Then it was pack and float time. We hit the local super grocery and loaded up on lunch and fruit and drinks. I packed my southern belle floppy hat (totally would fit right in at the Kentucky Derby) and we stopped by an army surplus store for him a booney hat. Side note: after giving him the pouty look and a big ole long suffering sigh, I got the cutest camo skirt on earth....trust me, it's jam up.

So then it was off to the river. This setup was the best. We paid when we made our reservation then we parked at the pickup point where a big ole van loaded us and our cooler up driving us down to the insertion point. We picked our canoe, blue to match my toe nail polish. Then we attempted to insert. Attempted, cause it took me awhile to get my balance and get my butt up on the front seat. And would you believe I had to face the front of the boat and hold an oar. I was sure it was wrong cause I'm suppose to sit facing my rower and admire his muscles in the sun as he rows us along with my in my big ole sunhat and trailing a hand in the water....turns out paddle is a verb, fancy that.

So we started upstream, then turned around and headed down stream. Now, I've canoed once before, in San Diego bay, and it was ALOT different. This river was so low I could touch my oar to the bottom at any given time. We had to work around logs, fallen trees, drunken groups of beer drinkers and the occasional church group, but the funniest one was the family with the parents in the kayak and their boys in a canoe. The daddy spent more time getting out of his kayak and pulling his boys out of the brush then moving down the river. Boy howdy we barely made it past them without getting t-boned.

Then we moved along and found us a sandbarge where we picniced in our boat, eating our yummy salads and drinking our sodas. We must have been quite a sight sitting there eating salads in our big ole hats while the other peeps were drinking beer and eating buckets of fried chicken. We started joking about being the old yuppies on the river, boy have the times changed. lol

So here we were chilling in our boat, having lunch, laughing and feeding the fish all kinds of egg, salad, and veggies then I realized I had to pee. Apparently my husband didn't realize that I was no stranger to pee-ing in the woods. So I went up on the bank by the brush and hunkered down behind a log and set about my business. I'd asked Dave to stand with his back to me and watch the river, making sure noone came around the bend. Except he turns around and giving me an evil grin, raises the camera and starts snapping pictures. I feel backwards and peed on my shoes and part of my shorts. Damn it.

Nothing puts you in a good mood like pee-ing on your shoes. But we prevailed and had a great time. Best of all, when we got to the end pick up place, they helped us out of our canoe and we jumped straight into the truck and home for a nap.

Proof that we're not too old to have us a good time without our babies.

I'm kinda scared of what tomorrow brings.

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2 days on the road

We made excellent time driving the kiddos up to drop off with my folks. A full day there to the meeting city, and a full day back home to Dave. A few thoughts on the trip:

- Love is not my favorite truck stop any longer, nasty! Travel America centers are NICE!

- Hearing my kids warn each other to "hover" when using the potty in a not so great bathroom, priceless!

- There is only so many times you can distract Duchess before she'll continue to talk for a full hour

- My kids love 50's music

- Duchess bought ran me off the road cause I was hysterically laughing at her story of a new movie where a dog threatens to eat someone and poop them out on the floor, you had to be there I guess...sounded funnier than writing it

- Princess, bless her heart, has a tiny bladder

- We had some great chats on the road, making me totally appreciate my time with my kids

- Country Inn & Suites is the NICEST hotel. It was clean, friendly staffed, beautiful and the sheets were fantastically soft, nice tub too, good for soaking

- Loved seeing my mom and dad. I miss them so much.

- Got up and left at 5 am heading home to Dave while everyone else slept till 9

- Made excellent time

- Preplanned well. Had six cd's of "themes" that lasted the entire trip...did you know you could put 20 songs on a cd? Anyway: glee, rock, glee 2, rock 2, girls rock, and combo. Fun times.

- I did the entire trip home with 4 stops

- Weirdest stop was a truck stop with an out of order women's room so the deskclerk cleared the men's room so 4 women could use it, NASTY....If I'd ever wondered about the men's room, it lived up to NO expectations. Although Dave did explain the scented cakes in the urinals to me.

- Managed to drive without any speeding tickets

- Got home to Murphy about passing out in excitement...seems he moped the entire time I was gone. He is a momma's boy.

- Dave took me straight out for dinner at Joe's and didn't tease me once for spraying him with crab juice as I attempted to eat an entire pot of snow crab legs. YUM! Althought I got the fire roasted version which was so spicy and so messy, I was covered head to toe in seasonings and crab juice. They had to hold the bathroom door open for me so I could wash up afterwards but girl was starving!

All in all, the kids had a blast and so did I. Now I'm enjoying my week with my hubby.

After my nap, I'll relate my adventures from today.

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Road Trip 3001

Yet another road trip is about to commence. Woohoo, I do so love me some road trips. Big arse truck stops, singing and tooling along following the white lines spells freedom for me. First summer in evah that I'm not working, instead hanging with my kids and keeping my family busy and happy. I'm loving our life.

So I'm packing my babies for a full week with their mimi and pepaw. But first I'm driving them a long way to meet up at a hotel with my folks for the evening. Then I'll bust out of there on a mission....get back to my man.

I'm burning tons of cds, washing laundry, packing snack and bags for the babies. Charging ipods, gameboys and phones.

Then after dinner it's gym time and off to bedibye. As at 4 am I'm gonna be up and on the road. Watch out Texas, I'm driving through....

And shocker of all, I'm leaving my laptop home as it's a turn around trip for me so I'll get back to you on Saturday.

Be well my friends....

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Upcoming Roadtrip Preparations

I love roadtrips.

However this is a special one. In two days I'll leave early and drive my babies up to see my mom and dad. Then I'll drive back alone for a week with my boyfriend (oops, husband, love of my life, guy who snuggles and tucks my hair behind my ears when he's talking to me..you know...him). I get to hug my mom and know my babies are in the very best hands.

However, on the way home....12 hours in the car BY MYSELF. Which means, sunroof down...jaunty driving hat and all the music I can pump at loud volumes through my sweet boise system.

I'm already downloading and loading playlists for the trip. I'm gonna burn my cd's and have it ready to go.

Trip there: gospel, oldies, kid songs
Trip back: FREE FOR ALL

oh happy day

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Memorial Weekend

We hiked 4 miles one day, we swam ALOT, we hit up church, we started packing for the kids' trip this week, we bbq-ed, we slept in, we finished school and we hit up the movies. Oh and we ate alot of ice cream, just because. And we thought of the vets who gave it all, going over it with our kids to which they both thanked their daddy for his service but said they were glad he didn't die in service. Ahhhhh.

All in all it was a relaxed and lovely weekend. Got no complaints. Hope your weekend was great.

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